10 Things You Didn't Know About A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
After A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master did well at the box office and with critics, New Line Cinema tried to fast-track the next sequel. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child was released on August 11, 1989 but, unfortunately, it didn’t get as good of reviews as Part 4. The story brings back Lisa Wilcox as Alice and Robert Englund as Freddy, who is this time trying to regain power by using Alice’s unborn child.
This film also delves more into the backstory of Freddy, including his mother Amanda and the story of how he was conceived. The film is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, but there are some things you might not know about the movie. Here are 10 Things You Didn't Know About A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child.
10 The Script Was Being Written While They Were Shooting
Much like A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, the script for The Dream Child was not finished by the time they needed to start filming. The director, Stephen Hopkins, has admitted that the script wasn’t completed and pretty much everyone agrees that the film’s production was rushed. The script was also constantly undergoing changes since it was being written while they filmed.
Joe Seely (who plays Mark) even admitted in the documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy that he gave up trying to memorize his lines since he knew they would be changed the next day anyway. The film didn’t even have an ending when it came to shooting that part of the film.
9 The Character Mark Was Based On The Director
The character Mark was one of Alice’s friends in the film who loves comic books and also has a thing for Greta. Played by Joe Seely in the movie, he was based on the director Stephen Hopkins. In real life, Hopkins loves comic books so the writers decided to give Mark the personality of Hopkins.
Hopkins is also a talented artist and actually drew the storyboards for the film. In Never Sleep Again, Englund expressed how impressed he was with the storyboards since they looked like little comic books.
8 David Miller Was Hired To Make A Simpler Freddy Makeup
In any A Nightmare on Elm Street film, Robert Englund is always the one to wear the most makeup and prosthetics. Usually, it took the effects department hours to apply his makeup, but David Miller was hired for The Dream Child in hopes of creating a Freddy makeup that was easier and quicker to apply.
Miller succeeded in the task, but the makeup for The Dream Child doesn’t look as it did in previous films. Miller also worked on The Dream Master, but the makeup looks much simpler in The Dream Child. Howard Berger even complained about the makeup and said that the quality of the sculpt didn’t even come close to the work that Kevin Yagher put into past sequels.
7 Many Cast And Crew Members Were Disappointed With The Final Product
While The Dream Master had originally opened with decent reviews, The Dream Child did not. With as crazy as production was for the fifth film, the poor reception of the movie didn’t come as a huge surprise to the cast and crew.
Erika Anderson said she was hoping the movie would be scarier than what it was, which makes sense since Freddy had started to become more comical since The Dream Master. Bob Shaye also revealed in Never Sleep Again that he had reassured fans they would never release a sequel they weren’t confident in, but admitted that Part 5 was "lame".
6 Leslie Boheim Had Pitched This Idea For Nightmare 3
As mentioned previously, the script for A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child was all over the place and went through multiple rewrites. David Schow had originally started working on writing Part 5 under the name Freddy Rules, but John Skipp and Craig Spector were then hired by New Line to pen a new script.
Unfortunately, New Line’s executives thought this script was too “Kubrickian”, which for some reason was something they didn’t want. They then called in Leslie Boheim to re-write the script, who had previously had the idea of Freddy as a baby for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.
5 Robert Englund Didn’t Play Super Freddy
Robert Englund has played Freddy Krueger in every A Nightmare on Elm Street movie to date (except the 2010 remake), but he actually didn’t play Super Freddy in The Dream Child. When Mark gets sucked into his comic book, he encounters a bigger, more muscular version of Freddy. Instead of putting a bodysuit on Englund, New Line Cinema hired Michael Bailey Smith to take on the role.
Smith revealed in the Never Sleep Again documentary that the lightning bolt on his chest wasn’t originally part of the costume, but was added in after his shirt caught on fire. Smith also played a stunt double for Danny Hassel at the beginning of the film during the love scene between Dan and Alice.
4 Robert Englund Filmed The Toughest Scene Of The Series
Between eight Nightmare on Elm Street movies and all of the other projects Englund has appeared in, he often has to do a lot of stunts. Sure he has a stunt double, but certain scenes require him to do the stunts if Freddy’s face is clearly visible.
Out of all the stunts he’s had to do in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, Englund said that hanging upside down from the stairs in The Dream Child was the toughest scene he’s had to film. He commented in Never Sleep Again that the blood would constantly be rushing to his head during filming.
3 Kelly Jo Minter Had Food Poisoning During The Diving Board Scene
Kelly Jo Minter played the character Yvonne and while her character survived in the movie, Minter was struck with a bad case of food poisoning during filming. Minter was not only struggling to act while being sick, but she had never done any type of special effects work before.
To pull off the effect, the team built foam claws for stop motion animation and rear screen projection. This meant that when Minter was up on the diving board, she didn’t really have anything to act with. That being said, she was still very convincing in the scene.
2 H.R. Giger Inspired The Motorcycle Scene
H.R. Giger was a Swiss painter who is most known in the film industry for his work on Alien. His artwork often mixes human anatomy with machines, which has inspired dozens of movies over the years, including The Dream Child. The special effects team behind Dan’s motorcycle death credit Giger as being the inspiration for Dan’s transformation.
For those that don’t remember the scene, Dan falls asleep while driving his motorcycle and Freddy takes over the bike. Dan then becomes one with the machine as Freddy punctures his body with wires and fuses his body to the motorcycle. The scene was one of the more graphic deaths in the film, so much so that the MPAA forced the filmmakers to cut several segments of the scene out of the film.
1 Erika Anderson Got Spaghetti Sauce Stuck In Her Prosthetics
Erika Anderson’s character, Greta, is another character who gets quite a graphic death. Greta’s mother is very controlling, especially when it comes to Greta’s diet. Freddy uses this against Greta by forcing food (and her own organs) into her mouth until she chokes to death. Anderson had to wear prosthetic cheeks in the sequence to pull off the effect, which forced the actress to only eat through a straw when she filmed the scene.
Anderson became so hungry on set that she decided to just eat the spaghetti that had been made on set that day. Anderson explained in Never Sleep Again that that turned out to be a bad idea since the spaghetti sauce had dripped down into the chin part of her prosthetic and stayed there all day.